Locale Examples

Locale Currency Conventions

Application programs should not reset the default locale as a way of requesting an international object, because resetting default locale affects the other programs running in the same process. Use one of the factory methods instead, e.g. Collator::createInstance(Locale).

In general, a locale object or locale string is used for specifying the locale. Here is an example to specify the Belgium French with Euro currency locale:

C++

Locale loc("fr", "BE");
Locale loc2("fr_BE");

C

const char *loc = "fr_BE";

Java

ULocale loc = new ULocale("fr_BE");

Note: Java does not support the form Locale("xx_yy_ZZ"), instead use the form Locale("xx","yy","ZZ").

Locale Constants

A Locale is the mechanism for identifying the kind of object (NumberFormat) that you would like to get. The locale is just a mechanism for identifying objects, not a container for the objects themselves. For example, the following creates various number formatters for the “Germany” locale:

C++

UErrorCode status = U_ZERO_ERROR;
NumberFormat *nf;
nf = NumberFormat::createInstance(Locale::getGermany(), status);
delete nf;
nf = NumberFormat::createCurrencyInstance(Locale::getGermany(), status);
delete nf;
nf = NumberFormat::createPercentInstance(Locale::getGermany(), status);
delete nf;

C

UErrorCode success = U_ZERO_ERROR;
UChar *pattern;
UNumberFormat *nf;
UParseError *pe;
nf = unum_open( UNUM_DEFAULT, pattern, 0, "fr_FR", pe, &success );
unum_close(nf);
nf = unum_open( UNUM_CURRENCY, pattern, 0, "fr_FR", pe, &success );
unum_close(nf);
nf = unum_open( UNUM_PERCENT, pattern, 0, "fr_FR", pe, &success );
unum_close(nf);

Java

NumberFormat nf = NumberFormat.getInstance(ULocale.GERMANY);
NumberFormat currencyInstance = NumberFormat.getCurrencyInstance(ULocale.GERMANY);
NumberFormat percentInstance = NumberFormat.getPercentInstance(ULocale.GERMANY);

Querying Locale

Each class that performs locale-sensitive operations allows you to get all the available objects of that type. You can sift through these objects by language, country, or variant, and use the display names to present a menu to the user. For example, you can create a menu of all the collation objects suitable for a given language. For example, the following shows the display name of all available locales in English (US):

C++

int32_t count;
const Locale* list = NULL;
UnicodeString result;
list = Locale::getAvailableLocales(count);
for (int i = 0; i < count; i++) {
    list[i].getDisplayName(Locale::getUS(), result);
    /* print result */
}

C

int32_t count;
UChar result[100];
int i = 0;
UErrorCode status = U_ZERO_ERROR;
count = uloc_countAvailable();
for (i = 0; i < count; i++) {
    uloc_getDisplayName(uloc_getAvailable(i), "en_US", result, 100, &status);
    /* print result */
}

Java

import com.ibm.icu.util.*;
public class TestLocale {
    public void run() {
        ULocale l[] = ULocale.getAvailableLocales();
        int n = l.length;
        for(int i=0; i<n; ++i) {
            ULocale locale = l[i];
            System.out.println();
            System.out.println("The base name of this locale is: " + locale.getBaseName());
            System.out.println("Locale's country name: " + locale.getDisplayCountry());
            System.out.println("Locale's script name: " + locale.getDisplayScript());
            System.out.println("Locale's language: " + locale.getDisplayLanguage());
            System.out.println("Locale's variant: " + locale.getDisplayVariant());
        }
    }
    public static void main(String args[]) {
        new TestLocale().run();
    }
}